Are Millennial Employees Driving Casual Dress Codes?

Did you catch a glimpse of sweat pants among your fellow travelers donned the last time you boarded an airplane? How about a pair of torn blue jeans at the next table at that restaurant downtown? What about in the office?

Traveling, eating out and working in a professional setting used to be significant events that we dressed deliberately for. Do we bother anymore? Should we be taking it more seriously?

Maybe the better questions are what’s changing and who, exactly, is changing it. Conventional wisdom says “dress for the job you want,” but, as millennials make up more and more of the workforce, we’re rethinking what a healthy work-life balance looks like, and part of that equation is how we dress.

What Are The Trends?

In a survey conducted in 2016, OfficeTeam found nearly one-half of the senior-level managers who responded thought their employees dressed too casually for the workplace. Almost a third actually used the phrase “too much skin” to describe their employees’ choice of workplace attire. And yet, even some of the largest and oldest corporate institutions in America and beyond are relaxing their dress codes.

JPMorgan Chase — which has been around in one form or another since stagecoaches were a popular mode of transportation — sent shivers of indignation up and down Wall Street in 2016 when they made a show of embracing “business casual” attire. The decision was circulated to more than 237,000 employees in an official internal memo.

And they’re not alone — other major multinationals have done the same in recent years, including IBM and General Electric, who’ve pushed their own envelopes and embraced the free-wheeling culture of the tech industry by tossing aside the dark pants and white shirt they favored in the past.

These were uniforms by any conventional definition, but, in a push to court younger and more enthusiastic talent, corporate culture, in general, seems to be lightening up in the wardrobe department.

Casual Friday, All Week Long?

So, why’s this happening?

Some folks maintain that the outsized role Silicon Valley has come to play in the world economy and has driven Wall Street and other spheres of modern commerce toward lighter and more casual attitudes. Since technology is young, hip and exciting, other industries are beginning to mimic that culture and aesthetic.

Still others believe the handing over of the economy’s reins to the millennial generation has been the driving force behind this transition. The coming-of-age of Generation X and millennials signals one of the most significant transfers of economic power in history, and that means recruiting and talent retention efforts are now fixed squarely on these two tech-savvy, laid-back, globally-minded generations.

As our separate worlds begin to mesh in new ways across county, state and international borders, we increasingly seem to be speaking with one voice when it comes to how we live, work, recreate and define success.

And, yes, one of those new consensuses seems to be an ever-wider appreciation for less formal attire. In some ways, it was inevitable — relaxed social “decency” standards mean we don’t need bonnets, hats, ankle-length dresses, stockings, overcoats or gloves anymore.

Is it possible humankind today relies less and less on the trappings of success and materialism — clothing included — to express ourselves or judge others? In other words, have we gradually learned there’s more to books than their covers? Do we prize the content of a person’s soul and the quality of their ideas more highly than we do their wardrobe choices?

Quite possibly. Add that to the list of reasons for this change. Our shift toward casual clothing has all the makings of a perfect storm of social phenomena — a cultural movement made possible by the many moving parts of an ever-smaller and ever more connected world.

So, it’s not really about millennials, at least not exclusively. It’s not about the economy passing into younger hands. It’s not even about stuffy old banking institutions shaking off the cobwebs to appeal to a world that’s aging more and more slowly.

It’s about all these things.

The trick, one supposes, is not letting expectations fall farther than they need to. And that brings us to some wardrobe wisdom that’s not terribly likely to change anytime soon.

Some Things Will Never Change

Look — we’ve talked a lot about how wardrobe expectations in the professional world are changing, but some things about the way we dress are probably never going to change. Think again about what it means to “dress for the job you want.”

If you have ambitions of career advancement — or even of merely being taken seriously as a professional — you simply can’t relax your personal dress code as much as you might like. Sorry. Image does matter, and it probably always will, to a certain extent.

What does a work outfit look like if it’s to appear both appropriately casual and abundantly competent? You don’t need to wear a suit jacket or a tie, but you probably do want to:

Embrace buttons on your shirts. V-necks and undershirts have their place in the office, and it’s underneath shirts with buttons.

Avoid wearing denim more than a couple times each week. Jeans are fine in most “business casual” settings these days, but they’re also pretty pedestrian. Aim for a notch or two above “conventional” when you dress for work if you want to stand out.

Take hygiene seriously. This probably doesn’t need to be said among adults, but keep your makeup tasteful and maintain a measure of control over your stubble. Comb your hair once in a while. Use deodorant judiciously. The clothes you choose should complement an already clean and professional appearance — not apologize for your lack of one.

This is really about compromise. For all the reasons we’ve discussed, it’s more acceptable than ever to favor casual attire in the workplace. But, maybe there’s comfort in knowing we’ll always get out of life what we choose to put in — and that this sometimes means wearing clothes on the outside that mirror the ambitions, the attention to detail, the thoughtfulness and the professionalism we possess on the inside.